Pages

Sunday, February 26, 2017

spring does not arrive in february

At fifty-five degrees old snow shrivels like old soap in the sun we leave the door open going and coming, coming and going as we please sitting in the sun replenishing Vitamin D the sky, blue again, seems immense its lid off and drips large and small from the roofs of snow entertain, mesmerize, refract the light, plop plop plop and plink-a-plink inside Josie gets a bath, winter fur curling, waving, smelling sweet – does he feel new? washed clean? – locks released glowing in the sun blowing in the breeze and that night Elliott sneaks a dead mouse into the kitchen and I listen to the crunch crunch crunch and a slow motion fly
circles
the
light.

A New York Times obituary tells me of a dancer who plopped down for life in the Mojave creating a theater and something you can’t quite name and in an interview somewhere this dancer who lived in this desert town population two, maybe three, was asked, well, don’t you ever get lonely? and she says something like no, I have my imagination.

MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Extended family informs new music as always now listening to those old familiar tunes and melodies and words familiar and in them sometimes hearing something new / I like to believe that / but here now true new

and perhaps you see: good drivin’ tune.

now
seems to me

When a member of That Group There shoots ’em up, bombs ’em down, claims the same: We must delete All of Them All of Them quit being bleedingheart goody2shoos open your eyes

get them outta here!

But when a member of This Group Here shoots ’em up, bombs ’em down, claims the same: Well, you know, He was just an Extremist, He was just a Nut.

Duh.

I am glad my heart is full of blood and yes bleeds sometimes because hearts are blood not stone not turnips and for sufferin’ shufflin’ feet two good shoes are a must

⟳⟲

Nice to see grass again, the green and the mud and the slime and the mold that heralds spring, tracks of turkey and rabbit and weasel across the thin old snow, Josie studies each track with staccato snorts but it is false fake spring, we learn to discern, wind resumes bitter North howling spewing ice chips, pillow down. Spring does not arrive in February. Not yet, anyway.

Give it time.

And as my ancestors head west in a covered wagon Spring 1837 Sheldon, Fidelia, and baby boy James relying on horsepower and taverns and whiteness to get to their future, a bob-bob-bobbin’ along free and unfettered paving the way over those in chains and those who lay bleeding and mostly those who are just plain gone and praise the lord for small favors: food for the belly, water for the thirst, the beast for the burden, safe travel and a clean board for a travellers’s rest, pleasant visages all around, rivers and lakes and prairies dehabited, occasional congregations

for prayer.

But what if – those who had settled before in these roads and along these roads and despite these roads had not been savaged, dismissed, gathered up, labelled up, tied up, lied to, cheated, deleted, removed? What if – the people had not been forcibly

violently

removed?

Where would I be?

We keep removing people –as if we are a plague

this child never chained but for those quirky social mores, expectations, of a white 1960s semi-religious intact suburban household where Dick Van Dyke played on the idiot box and never ever really moved by much except

emotion.

Would I be swaying gently covered wagon moving forward pious temperance, prayer, I listen to the plop plop plop plink-a-plink of winter softening just a bit and notice this false fake spring bringing forth clusters of catnip in the garden it invades.